Automatic, real-time plant selection for crop thinning requires precise distance measurements to ensure complete plant necrosis or retention by accommodating for the physical offset between the detection mechanism and the action mechanism. However, conventional odometry mechanisms are unsuited for this application. Remote systems, such as GPS, have resolutions that are too low to determine the precise beginning and end of a plant within a field. Furthermore, these remote systems tend to be slow and power consuming, rendering the systems impractical for real-time plant selection. Visual odometry mechanisms are too slow for use in real-time, in-situ plant treatment. On-board systems, particularly mechanical systems, could be ideal due to short computing times and low power requirements. However, these systems suffer from environmental interference. For example, a wheel encoder that measures the traversed distance based on the radius and number of rotations of a wheel rolling along the ground could be used. However, the wheel encoder suffers from interference from the surface features of the ground, which varies across a field. As shown in FIG. 4, in soft ground (e.g., soft or loose soil), the wheel of the wheel encoder slips, resulting in slower wheel rotation than would be expected for the same linear axle translation. In rough terrain (e.g., dry ground or lumpy soil), the wheel of the wheel encoder traverses over a larger distance (e.g., surface area) than expected for the same linear axle translation. This inaccuracy, while small, can be too large for precision in-situ agricultural use, such as when close-packed plants are to be treated.
Thus, there is a need in the agricultural odometry field to create a new and useful automatic odometry calibration system and method. This invention provides such new and useful automatic odometry calibration system and method.